ELIZABETH HOOKS

Renaissance Woman, Mother, Humanitarian

For the past 7 days, I have been doing something I couldn’t do 10 years ago. I have been going through old pictures and remembering. Remembering, in order to tell the life story of my paternal grandmother, Elizabeth Hooks. The woman who raised me and who I called ‘Mom’. 

At the time of her passing in 2013 at the age of 102, I tried to do what you are expected to do. Write a factual and loving synopsis of her life to print in a program for people to take home and file away in a drawer somewhere. I couldn’t do it.  Her life was so long and rich that it was impossible, especially in my grief, to do it justice. 

She was born not long after the turn of the 20th century and passed an almost equal length of time into the 21st. This timing made her life experience, especially as a Black woman, quite unique.  I have done my best to capture some of her experience and share it in words and pictures on social media for the last week, leading up to today, the 112th Anniversary of her birth. In this special episode of Real Talk with Creatrix Matrix, you all have an opportunity to hear about her life in her own words. 

This interview was recorded through StoryCorps in March of 2013 just days after her 100th birthday. I hope you enjoy listening to it as much as she and I enjoyed making it.